DETROIT, Mich. -- If 13-year-old Iryna Osipova, who begins high school this fall, gets a chance to share what she did this summer, she could says he designed her very own website. Or, she could boast about building and launching a model rocket. Then again, she might just say she had a lot of fun getting WET.

Women in Engineering Training, or WET for short, at Wayne State University's College of Engineering, is a four-week math and computer camp with engineering applications.

The best part for the parents is it is free. Ask the participants -- 28talented young women entering the ninth grade from five middle schools in the Detroit Metro area -- and they might say it is the opportunity to make friends with girls from diverse backgrounds. Most of the girls return each summer to complete the three-year cycle of the program.

Pam Joseph, coordinator of the camp, and College administrators, have another motive. "By the time they hit 10th grade, they'll know what they'll want to do (in life)," says Joseph, an educational consultant. "If you expose them to engineering for three years, that's enough time to allow them to know if it's right for them."

For the current group of young women, Ms. Joseph recruited good students from Earhart and Go Lightly middle schools in Detroit, Kosciuszko Middle School in Hamtramck, Best Middle School in Dearborn Heights, and Beer Middle School in Warren. "We try to reach out and get a good diverse group," says Joseph. "We try to reach those kids who don't necessarily know what engineering is about, and who will be the first generation in their family to go to College."

In this summer camp funded by the National Science Foundation, the teachers and counselors are all female. "They not only learn what engineering is about, but also the role women play in engineering," Joseph says.

The young women attend three classes four times a week on the Wayne State campus -- in Manoogian Hall across the street from engineering, and in the College's computer labs. For most, it is their first exposure to a college and Wayne State where students are currently enrolled in the summer semester.

On Fridays, the young women visit nearby points of interest -- the Wayne State Planetarium in the physics building across the street, and the new Detroit Science Center and African-American Museum on the eastern edge of campus.

J. Sia Robinson, a 23-year veteran math teacher at McNair Middle School in Detroit, teaches the morning geometry and rocketry classes. "My overall objective is for them to obtain math skills and have fun," says Robinson, who is working toward a Ph.D. in education.

The young women picked up a few theories in geometry. They learned the properties of propulsion by observing plastic film canisters filled with Alka-Seltzer and water. They made paper airplanes and flew them, experimenting with their different characteristics. And they made their own clinometers out of plastic protractors, straws, tape and a penny for a weight.

"They're discovering the principals and purpose of their rockets," says Robinson. "They learn glider characteristics. And we link it all to the NASA space effort." On the final day of camp, the girls launched their rockets from the Mathaei athletic field, while parents, teachers and counselors looked skyward, following the quick ascent of the small orange rockets.

The College of Engineering has been graduating about 30 percent female engineers compared to males in the past several years, a bit higher than the national average, according to Gerald Thompkins, assistant dean, and director of the WET program. "We'd like to do even better."

For Iryna, the best part of the camp is the computer class, she says, taught by Jasmine Roberson, a Wayne State education major. Her website states says she hopes to become a dancer, a singer or a poet. Based on the caliber of content on the website, she will have many career choices. The quality of her autobiography and poems reveals a budding writer. The layout and graphics show off a talent for fine art. And the main design -- a rich and colorful composition of her personal vision of outer space -- reveal a mind that is reaching for the stars and may well know how to get there.